Photo: Enric (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walk down Edinburgh's Old Town through its real dark history, with the legends labelled as legends: the witch burnings on Castlehill, Deacon Brodie's double life, the Lawnmarket gallows where William Burke was hanged, the Old Tolbooth prison under the Heart of Midlothian, Mary King's Close and the South Bridge vaults, the chapel that received the bodies of executed Covenanters, the Grassmarket gallows and Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson, Burke and Hare's West Port, Greyfriars Kirkyard with the Covenanters' Prison, Mackenzie's mausoleum, the mortsafes and Greyfriars Bobby, the Anatomical Museum that keeps Burke's skeleton, Surgeons' Hall, and the Old Calton Burial Ground with its watchtower against grave robbers. About 4.5 km on foot, from the Castle Esplanade to Waterloo Place.
19 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 418 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 102 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Witches' Well, Deacon Brodie's Tavern, Lawnmarket gallows site, Libberton's Wynd, Heart of Midlothian and the Old Tolbooth, Mercat Cross, Mary King's Close.
Blair Street Vaults, Magdalen Chapel, West Bow, The Grassmarket gallows, Maggie Dickson's, West Port and Tanner's Close.
Covenanters' Prison, Mackenzie Mausoleum, Greyfriars Kirkyard, Greyfriars Bobby statue, Anatomical Museum, Teviot Place, Surgeons' Hall, Old Calton Burial Ground.
The 1894 fountain near the Castlehill execution ground, where Agnes Sampson was strangled and burned in 1591.
Brass plates mark the city gallows, where William Burke was hanged on 28 January 1829 before a crowd estimated in the tens of thousands.
A real seventeenth-century street sealed under the City Chambers, and the plague legends that grew up about it.
Where Burke and Hare lured their victims, among them Mary Paterson and James Wilson, and sold the bodies to Robert Knox.
Where the National Covenant was signed in 1638, and where iron mortsafes guarded the newly buried from resurrection men.
The university museum that keeps William Burke's skeleton.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 19 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 19 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Edinburgh's Dark History — Witches, Bodysnatchers and the Gallows, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
19 narration points, including Witches' Well, Heart of Midlothian and the Old Tolbooth, Mercat Cross, Mary King's Close and Magdalen Chapel. That is about 47 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 19 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.